Sunlight foundation discusses open data at the White House.

The roundtable, which occurred on June 25, was facilitated by the Center for Open Data Enterprise. As the event was held under the Chatham House Rule, the information discussed there could be shared. Here is the summary published by Sunlight Foundation.

Interested in communicating the story behind your data? Request a demo today and learn how LiveStories can help your organization.

Our CEO shows how companies can use open data.

LiveStories CEO Adnan Mahmud was recently featured in this CSO article which considers how companies can use open data to locate cyber security talent.

NYC Commission on Human Rights uses data to fight housing injustice.

The NYC Commission on Human Rights has partnered with the city's data analytics office to use open data to identify landlords who discriminate based on source of income. Read more at Civicist.

Harvard's Civic Analytics Network will host webinar.

The webinar, "The Power of Data Visualization in Cities," is scheduled for June 20 from 5pm to 6pm (ET). It will be monitored by Stephen Goldsmith, Director of CAN and the Innovations Program at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Key takeaways from 2017 NACCHO Conference

Last week, LiveStories attended the 2017 NACCHO Conference in Pittsburgh. We learned a lot and want to share our insights. Read the details in this post.

Interested in communicating the story behind your data? Request a demo today and learn how LiveStories can help your organization.

New York ranks as top U.S. smart city in latest report.

StateScoop reports professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently released a Cities Readiness Index which gives worldwide rankings of cities that are most ready to embrace emerging technologies.

Landmark study tracks human physical activity via smartphones.

Conducted by Stanford researchers, this NIH-funded study used a larger dataset than any previous human movement study, with over 700,000 people in 111 countries. The study was published July 10, 2017, in the advance online edition of Nature.

LiveStories includes data on opioid-related prescriptions, deaths, and hospitalizations for all 58 counties in California, made available from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). Exploring this data provides valuable insights on where and how the opioid crisis hits hardest in the state. For example, you can see how opioid deaths are more concentrated in northern counties (all data is per 100,000 residents):

Many experts trace the roots of the opioid crisis to the overprescription of opioid pain relievers, beginning in the late 1990’s. Health experts now recognize that prescription opioids are dangerously addictive, and in many California counties, opioid prescription rates have stabilized or decreased.

But legal prescription opioids are just one side of the epidemic. Even if legal opioids become harder to obtain, illegal opioids—notably heroin—are surging in popularity, and are often cheaper and more accessible than prescription opioids. The geographical pattern for heroin deaths is also different for overall opioid deaths:

At LiveStories, we’re familiar with this data from our work with the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), a coalition of county-based groups dedicated to tackling the opioid epidemic at the local level. We've highlighted the vital work they do in a previous post. Now, the data underlying their work is available to anyone with a LiveStories subscription.

Obviously, the opioid epidemic spreads beyond California. LiveStories is working to add opioid data for all counties and states in America, and our library already includes data on overall drug poisoning rates. You can get a customized report for your county here:

May 29 is Memorial Day, a national holiday for remembering America's fallen military veterans. At LiveStories, we recognize and honor the sacrifices that hundreds of thousands of American veterans have made over the nation's history, and continue to make today.

The tradition of celebrating Memorial Day began shortly after the Civil War. In 1868, a group of Union veterans decreed May 30 as "Decoration Day," a time for laying flowers on the graves of soldiers who died during the war. Many states, both in the north in the south, continued this tradition of remembrance. After more than a century, Memorial Day became an official federal holiday in 1970, during the height of the Vietnam War.

The government's Defense Casualty Analysis System compiles data on America's war dead, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War. The America Community Survey, conducted by the Census, compiles data on America's living veterans. As part of LiveStories' Five Facts series, we've created a brief overview of both sets of data.

The latest installment of LiveStories' "Five Facts" series explores data on veterans.READ THE STORY →